Jake Eberle (left) as Simon, with Jeffrey Johnson as his
lover Eutychus

The Perverse Tongue claims to be a play about a distant future
in America in which Christian fundamentalists have taken over the
government and run the country based on a strict interpretation of the
Bible. But if audiences are expecting an exploration of an American
Christian Taliban-like regime, they won't get it here. The theocracy that
runs the country in The Perverse Tongue isn't really the purpose of
the play, but is instead simply a plot device, necessary for what is, in
truth: a modern retelling of Shakespeare's Measure for Measure,
without the happy ending.

Playwright George Larkin includes an author's note in the program in
which he credits Shakespeare, although there is surprisingly no mention of
Measure for Measure. (He instead gives a nod to the bloody Titus Andronicus, which is
not surprising given that the Bible orders the "perverse tongue" to be
"cut out," much like that of Titus's daughter.) But this play is clearly based
on Measure. It has its Angelo - a hypocritical religious leader
named Asa, who will enforce the law no matter who it harms; its Claudio - a
young bride named Leah who is sentenced to death for violating religious
law by marrying although she is not a virgin (she had been raped); and its
Isabella - Leah's sister Rebekah, who is told by Asa that Leah will be
released if Rebekah will yield her own virginity to Asa's lecherous
desires. The play even contains its own version of the Duke - a man in
disguise who just might be the one person with the authority to
save Leah's life and Rebekah's virtue.

The idea of rewriting Measure for Measure as a tragedy isn't
necessarily a bad one. (For one thing, it solves the problem of marrying
Isabella to the unworthy Duke.) And the idea of a post-apocalyptic
America run by religious zealots has potential as well. But neither idea
is fully developed in The Perverse Tongue, and the resulting play
is a mess of confusing scenes and dialogue pushed too far.

The only Biblical laws that really get considered in The Perverse
Tongue are those dealing with sexual relations. But even they aren't
seriously discussed. According to Deuteronomy, if a man rapes a woman who
is not otherwise betrothed, he is to pay her father a fixed sum and then
must marry the woman. The law was probably intended to provide for any
child of the union, as well as to guarantee the now-unmarriable woman a
home. In The Perverse Tongue, this law is punitively applied. By
the time Leah's rape has been revealed, she is married to a man who loves
her and wants to remain married to her. This is of no matter to Asa; he
chooses to force her into marriage to her rapist. At one point in the
play, Asa orders Leah's loving husband killed. It is not clear why - he
hasn't committed any offense - but Asa can only order Leah into marriage
to her rapist if her own husband is out of the picture. Additionally, Asa
has also sentenced Leah to death for lying in court (about her virginity).
Why this sentence is suspended is never satisfactorily explained. The
only real explanation that can be offered for any of this is that the
playwright wanted to have Asa force Leah into marriage with her rapist,
and everything which may have stood in the way of this plot point (be it
other husbands or other death sentences) just had to be pushed out of the
way.

While the overall plot has its problems, many individual scenes fail to
connect as well. In what is probably the best monologue of the play, a
man who is about to be put to death for homosexuality speaks his mind
about why the Bible's prohibition on homosexuality should not be accepted.
It's a persuasive speech, which ultimately questions all of Biblical
morality, and it is well delivered by actor Jake Eberle as Simon, a
beaten man who is finally unafraid to speak his mind. But at the very end
of the speech, Simon suggests that God himself must be a self-loathing
homosexual - the audience rolls its eyes, and playwright Larkin loses
whatever ground he may have gained.

The cast is uneven, although the better performances are in the
better-written parts. The characters who actually have some moral crises
over whether Biblical laws should be enforced are much more interesting
and convincing than those who are simply written as purely evil. When the
script has two bad guys brew up a nefarious plot, look each other in the
eye, slowly nod and conspiratorially say, "hmmm," there just isn't enough
in the script to make them convincing as genuinely scary villains - and
Larkin pays the price for this when the play's final bloody scene elicits
only laughs from the audience.

There are a lot of good ideas behind The Perverse Tongue. Given
our nation's recent overthrow of a foreign religious regime, the time is
right for an indictment of those in America who flirt with religious
absolutism. But Larkin seems more concerned with simply using this idea
in order to drive his revenge tragedy plot, rather than giving it the
attention it deserves, and the better play he could have written remains
unwritten.

The Perverse Tongue runs at the Met Theatre in Hollywood,
Mondays through Wednesdays, through December 18. For reservations and
information, call (323) 957-1152 or click themettheatre.com